


Precipice

by icarus_chained



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Betrayal, Danger, Friendship, Gen, Loyalty, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-02
Updated: 2012-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-09 01:25:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I know," Holmes said, one day. </p><p>Criminal!Watson AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Precipice

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt, and this isn't the version I'm used to writing (more ACD, usually), so the voices may be somewhat, ah, shaky. *smiles sheepishly*
> 
> Hints at Holmes/Watson, but you could probably take it as platonic.

“I know,” Holmes said, one day. Out of the blue, his attention almost entirely focused on the mildly explosive set-up in front of him. A perfectly Holmesian non sequiter. 

John shook his head, grimacing faintly. One of these days, someone with rather more patience than he was going to have to instruct Holmes in the art of pertinent conversation.

“Hmm?” he asked, mildly, turning another page in his newspaper, surreptitiously holding his handkerchief to his nose under cover of the broadsheet. Good Lord, that smelled foul. “Know what?”

He was expecting … well. Much of anything, really. You could never tell, with Holmes. But not what actually happened. Not the sudden, pervasive stillness, the sudden deadly hush, as Holmes paused before answering. Startled, John lowered the newspaper, and looked over to see Holmes’ hands poised carefully on the edge of the table. To see them perfectly, incredibly still, as unmoving as the man’s bowed head.

“Holmes?” John asked, concerned now. “Sherlock?”

“You know, I really should have seen it sooner,” Holmes went on. Lifting one hand, moving something absently. Aimlessly, enough to set a thrill of worry through John. “I knew you were a gambler, of course, one would have to be blind to miss that.” Untrue, naturally. John had hidden that perfectly adequately, from all save Holmes. “I failed to notice, until recently, the regularity of your games. Or, rather, I failed to attach the correct importance to it.”

John said nothing. Remained seated, remained calm. Watched the small, sad little smile appear on the man’s profile, watched those clever eyes remain fixed resolutely ahead.

“How large would you say your organisation is, now?” Holmes asked, quietly. Some humour in it, at least. “Some dozen or so cells, at least in London? Mostly retired servicemen, isn’t it?”

John let the question hang, for a second. Thought about it. And then … “The bulk of us are retired army and navy,” he agreed, softly. Watching the smile flicker, the shoulders tighten. “A surprising number of the old medical corps, too. And the hired hands, of course.”

“Naturally,” Holmes agreed, with that poised, dangerous edge to his smile. “You know, I really should have realised sooner. For a smuggling ring, there’s always been an almost military efficiency to it.”

John smiled, soft and rueful. “Old habits,” he offered, and perhaps it should have been inane, but it wasn’t.

Holmes, finally, turned to look at him. Eyes dark and pained, mouth twisted in that small smile, when he saw things no-one else could see, and wished he didn’t. 

“You’re very careful,” the detective noted, softly. “Almost no casualties, no flare-ups. If it weren’t for the encounter with the Red Boys down on Thames Street, I probably wouldn’t have been aware of you at all.” He smiled, darkly. “That was … surgically handled.”

It was almost a compliment, for all the bitter edge. For all the knowing in it, the soft and bitter self-recrimination. John ducked his head. Saying nothing, for a moment. Until: 

“Well then,” he said, softly. “What now, old friend?”

Holmes looked at him. For a long, long minute, something soft and desperate in his face, juxtaposed over the coiled, dangerous thing in his stance, in the lines of his body. John, watching him, knew a moment of blind love.

“If I asked you to stop,” Holmes said, at last. Curiously, inflectionlessly. “If I asked you to close it down, tonight. What would you do?” Holding out neither hope nor anger, neither threat nor plea. Only passionless interest. 

A truly masterful lie. John knew, as no-one else would, the depth of pain underneath that mask, the depth of fury. The depth of hope. John knew, in the silence, and knowing …

He stopped, and he thought. For Holmes, as he would for no-one else. He stopped, and gave that the consideration it deserved. The choice Holmes, so hopelessly, asked him to make. He considered it.

And then, he stood. Quietly, carefully, making sure there was no threat. Watching the coil tighten regardless, watching his friend brace himself against him. John stood, and smiled ruefully down at Holmes.

“I would,” he said, softly, and watched Holmes blink in raw shock, watched his shoulders drop in surprise. “If you asked me that, I would stop tonight.” He shook his head, looked away from the stunned hope in those dark eyes. “But I would not help you destroy them. I wouldn’t betray them, or lead you to them. And I would not … I could not keep them from continuing themselves.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Holmes interrupted quickly, gaze narrow and fierce on the side of John’s face, tone trembling at the edges. Suspicion. Worry. Hope. “Once I knew to look, I recognised your touch in the planning. Your … certain blunt skill. Without you, I doubt they would be near so successful.” He swallowed. “John. Do you mean it?”

John smiled, a little bitterly. “If I have learned anything in these past few years together,” he said, quietly, “it is that the only way to stop you, once you are on the scent, is to kill you. Simply, and efficiently.” 

He had seen too many supposed master criminals fail to realise that, seen too many fall simply because they weren't willing to shoot the man when he needed shooting. No. The only way to stop a Holmes, the only way to stop _this_ Holmes, was a bullet. And that ...

He looked at the man. At his friend, poised still seated in his chair, watchful and knowing, deadly and so hopeful. The man who, for reasons sourced in some realm of madness, John loved. John looked at that man.

“And I find,” he said, so softly, to the wary hope in those intelligent, dangerous eyes, “that I have no wish to do that.” He smiled, faintly, ruefully. “If for no other reason than that your madness has infected me, I suspect.”

Hope flared, wild and desperate, in the face raised to him, in the eyes fixed on his. Holmes quivered with it, shook, for all the lingering edge of suspicion, for all the bitter taint of betrayal. Holmes looked at him, and hoped, and it was … beautiful. In a way few things had been to John since Afghanistan, since the Jezail bullet, and the return to a London empty of all save the cold, military calm of criminality. 

This man. Always, and for no sane reason, this man.

“I have abandoned more, to follow you into worse,” John whispered. Promised, really. Holding out one hand, carefully. Smiling, a little sadly. “I won’t balk, if you won’t.”

And for some reason, for no rational cause, the moments before Holmes reached out and took his hand were among the most terrifying in John’s life.


End file.
